Chapter 5 - The Rat TrapThe freeze on the fifty million dollars sent Michael and Ashley into a tailspin. Without that money, Michael’s leveraged buyouts collapsed, leaving him drowning in millions of dollars of personal debt to dangerous offshore creditors.
Desperate and paranoid, Michael turned to the only thing he knew: violence and cover-ups.
Inside a dimly lit parking garage at midnight, Michael met with a shady private investigator he had hired to clean up his mess.
“I need you to dig up everything on the search and rescue team that pulled those bodies out of the canyon,” Michael hissed, shoving a wad of cash into the man’s hands. “I think someone took the real bodies and replaced them.”
“You’re losing your mind, Carter,” the investigator grunted. “The police closed the case.”
“I don’t care what the police did!” Michael yelled. “I saw her! I saw Emma at the hotel!”
From the shadows of the upper parking level, I listened through a directional microphone.
Gabriel leaned over to me. “It’s time to move to Phase Two. We force Ashley to turn on him.”
The next morning, Ashley received an anonymous package at her private apartment. Inside was an audio flash drive.
When she plugged it into her laptop, her face turned pale.
It was a recording of Michael speaking to his attorney three months ago—before the mountain trip.
“If Ashley becomes a problem after Emma is gone,” Michael’s recorded voice said coldly, “we’ll frame her for the insurance fraud. She signed all the travel itineraries and policy documents anyway. She’s my scapegoat if things go sideways.”
Ashley’s hand shook violently as the recording played out.
“You bastard…” she whispered, tears of rage springing to her eyes. “You were setting me up all along!”
Right on cue, her phone rang from an unknown number.
She answered, her voice trembling. “Who is this?”
“Someone who knows Michael Carter uses women until they’re no longer convenient,” I said, modifying my voice slightly through an encoder. “He shoved his pregnant wife off a cliff, Ashley. What makes you think he won’t throw you under a bus to save his own skin?”
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“What do you want?!” Ashley sobbed.
“I want Michael to pay for what he did,” I replied softly. “Meet me at the old shipping warehouse on Pier 4 at midnight. Bring Michael’s personal laptop and the real financial ledgers. Do it, and you walk away with full immunity. Refuse… and you go down as his co-conspirator for murder.”
